


for all that you are

by writergirl8



Series: Shirbert Drabbles [3]
Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, It's ANOTHER day after the wedding fic because I have zero self control, Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24741310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: “I was just wondering,” he says carefully, “what you wanted to do now?”Anne frowns.“I’m more than happy to stay here on this beach with you.”The glimmer in Gilbert’s eye returns.“No, I meant for the rest of our lives.” He nudges her softly with his bare foot, beaming at that. “We’ve got a lot of time, you and I.”
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Series: Shirbert Drabbles [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1752193
Comments: 32
Kudos: 255





	for all that you are

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another day-after-wedding collaboration between myself and Jenni (lovelyrugbee on twitter). To go see her art (trust me, you wanna see her art) please check out her twitter and give her eight bazillion likes and retweets. 
> 
> Thank you to Catherine (youaretoosmart on twitter) for beta reading and telling me when I wrote some terrible sentences that then had to be slaughtered with a pitchfork. You're my favorite. 
> 
> So this was supposed to be a drabble... does that explain why it has zero plot? No? Alright then. 
> 
> Title from "Head Over Feet" by Alanis Morissette.
> 
> I'm writergirl8 on twitter if you want to talk about Shirbert! I know I do.

Yesterday, Anne had made plansfor today. She had decided that they were going to sleep in only a little, eat a hearty breakfast that she would cook on their brand new stove, then go into their new, small town and explore the world that was available to them. She had expected a scene in which Gilbert held his arm out to her and the two of them walked down the street together, charmingly confident, full of bliss, and painting the entire town golden with their smiles. Then, they would go home and she would serve Gilbert the greatest shepherd’s pie anyone had ever made, complete with a few of Mary’s spices used in a _most_ artful way. Everything was going to be perfect. After all, only one day of your life is your first day as a married person, and Anne had intended to make it count. 

Thus far, their day had not gone the way she had thought it would. 

It’s mid-afternoon before they even manage to haul themselves out of bed. Anne winds up heating some stew that Marilla had sent away with them when they drove off to their new home after the wedding. Instead of the elegant dress that she had pictured herself donning, she finds herself unwilling to leave the comfort of her nightgown. Instead of preparing a grand meal to christen their new home, she stands barefoot in their kitchen and Gilbert sits on the table in the same clothes he had slept in, chopping up apples from his orchard to eat with the stew. They don’t say much, but every once in a while Gilbert will reach forward, snag Anne around the waist, and bring her towards him so that he can kiss her on the cheek. Or she’ll stop what she’s doing at the stove, unable to help herself, and quietly kiss him on the shoulder over his shirt, her heart in her throat. 

Every time she does that, he runs his fingers down her loose, slept-in braid and she feels inexplicably content. 

“We should probably do something,” Anne suggests, half hearted. They’re sitting on the same side of the table, illogically close together, and they smile every time they accidentally elbow each other, which is ridiculous in the most wonderful way possible. 

“We did a few things this morning,” replies Gilbert unblinkingly. 

Anne contemplates kicking him, then chooses a different punishment in the form of sliding off of the wooden bench.

“I mean we should go _outside_ ,” she says happily, snatching her bowl off of the table before spinning her way to the sink, all the way up on her tip-toes. Gilbert follows her a moment after, gently nudging her to the side so that he can reach the sink and wash both of their bowls. 

“If you insist, Anne-girl.” His eyes twinkle as he teases her. Anne suddenly doesn’t feel like insisting much of anything at all. Her eyes drop to his mouth, which quirks up in amusement. “I think there’s a lake a few miles down the way.” 

The idea of any body of water is enough to distract Anne from her new husband, and she gleefully grabs his arm as though he has to stop washing the dishes in order to fully grasp the depth of her excitement. 

“We can go _fishing,”_ she says, squeezing his arm. Gilbert nods and begins to dry the bowl he’d just finished washing. 

“I think we have some equipment in the shed out back.” 

He kisses her on the cheek before slipping outside, still in his nightclothes, to go check. Anne watches the door as it taps closed behind him, listening to the sound of his heavy footsteps hitting the two front steps. One day, that sound will be as familiar to her as breathing, but for now everything is so exciting she could burst. 

“We have a shed,” she murmurs to no one, then twirls around once more to head back to their bedroom to change. 

Despite the fact that she is now a doctor’s wife, she dresses like a girl who lives on a farm, changing into an ugly brown skirt that she tends to wear on the muddier days at Green Gables. She manages to locate her belt amidst the disorganized chaos of their boxes and is in the process of pinning her hair up when Gilbert walks back in, grinning from ear-to-ear and holding a large, floppy white hat in hand. 

“Look what I found,” he says, seeming to be very satisfied with this turn of events. He plops the hat on his head and juts his chin out, turning to the side to display his visage to her, and awaits her praise. 

“ _Very_ dashing,” Anne says, straight-faced. Despite how ridiculous he looks in that hat, Gilbert is always dashing, and she is particularly charmed by the fact that he still looks too scrawny to belong underneath such a wide brim. But he preens a little at her words, tipping the hat at her before moving towards his own boxes to find clothes that are suitable for fishing. 

They walk at a quick clip to get to the lake, Anne’s fingers entwined with Gilbert’s as she tugs him through the woods and towards the water. He doesn’t seem to mind, she thinks, when she glances behind herself to see him following after her, his mouth split into a smile, his eyes full of their history. 

She pauses, there on the forest floor, and kisses him because of his kindness and patience and because, no matter where they are or what they’re doing, a part of Anne is always searching for the right words in the English language to capture what it is like to be so loved by him. 

They make their way through a particularly overgrown thicket to finally arrive at the lake. Anne places her gear next to Gilbert’s and settles her hands onto her waist as she turns to gaze at the bright new terrain they find themselves in. 

The lake doesn’t seem to be too deep-- she delights at the fact that she can see the little fish swimming beneath the clear, crystalline water. Downstream from where they stand, a small inlet leads to what she assumes is a larger lake or a river, but for now, the secluded spot, encircled by a group of large, venerable trees, is exactly what Anne wants. 

“This is quite out of the way,” she notes, curious. “How did you know it was here?” 

Gilbert shrugs, bending down to grab a glass jar out of his pack. He takes a sip of water before answering. 

“I came out here a few times to explore the area. I suppose I wanted to ensure there were places I could take you that would make you think of Avonlea.”

He hands the jar off to her and Anne takes it from him, half stunned into temporary silence by the thoughtfulness of his admission. 

“That’s…” she begins, then still can’t think of anything to say. She takes a sip from the jar. “Thank you.”

Gilbert shrugs sweetly, rubbing the back of his neck where he will most certainly be getting a burn today. 

“I want you to be happy here.”

“Oh.” She sets the jar down in the sand and walks over to him, gently tilting his chin towards her so he is able to see the sincerity in her expression. “I am happy. I’m married to you.”

Gilbert grins, so delighted that Anne can’t help the small laugh that escapes her lips. She’d rarely seen this side of him before they began their courtship and has found yet another kindred spirit in his most goofy, loving moods, which are almost always correlated. She loves each and every side of him, but this is one of the ones that she treasures the most because it is only for her. 

“In that case,” he says, “I suppose I’m glad we left the house after all.”

The sand, no matter how coarse it is, is too tempting to resist, so the two of them peel off their shoes and socks with very little debate. Gilbert rolls up the bottom of his trousers; Anne tucks the back of her skirt into her belt so that her legs will catch what little breeze the day has to offer. By the time they begin fishing, the sun is already beating down on them with aggression despite the fact that the day is tumbling towards late afternoon. She finds herself glad that it wasn’t so hot in Avonlea yesterday— she can’t imagine how long she would have been able to remain in her white dress. 

They fish in companionable silence for a while. Anne doesn’t much feel like putting in an ounce of effort, but a sidelong glance at Gilbert shows him looking at the water very intently, as though staring at the fish would make them more prone to biting. It’s so like him to view this as a task that can be performed to perfection simply with applied concentration. A laugh bubbles up in Anne. More than anything, she wants his attention back on _her_ again, as he’s always loved her with that same intensity, so she says “the first day I met Matthew I told him that I couldn’t picture myself as a wife,” and waits for his reaction. 

“You once told _me_ you didn’t think you could be a wife,” Gilbert says, both unsurprised and slightly amused at the antics of a thirteen-year-old Anne. 

“I said to him that I thought I could be a bride but not a wife, and it’s funny, I think, because in the last few years I’ve done so much picturing of myself as your wife that I barely thought of myself as a bride.”

“That’s better, isn’t it?” asks Gilbert, raising one of his eyebrows. “One of them’s for a day. The other one’s a lifetime.”

“Yes,” agrees Anne. “That’s better.” She hesitates just then. “I suppose I simply mean that it’s inexplicable, how one small thing can change everything.”

“Being in love with me is ‘small’ then?” teases Gilbert, wading a bit deeper into the water. Anne follows, determined to match him step for step. 

“It’s more that… it would have been so easy to miss,” she explains, tilting her head upwards and closing her eyes to the sun. She’s dropped all pretense of really caring about fishing now. It’s just an excuse to stand outside. “If I hadn’t let myself see it, it could’ve flown right past me.”

“A dark thought indeed,” comes his reply, but there’s no true sadness behind it. They’ve arrived at this lake, hand in hand, no more secrets between them. He’d told her last night that he didn’t think he had it in him to ever be afraid again. And Anne knows that it’s a silly thing to say, that fear is a part of being alive, but last night she had felt the same thing. That as long as Gilbert was beside her, she had nothing to be afraid of anymore. He is not scared of losing her and she is not scared of losing him. These are simple, staggering truths that the two of them are experiencing together, swept up in the reality of their last twenty-four hours. 

“Like never seeing the ocean,” she says quietly, because it feels equal to her, that sense of loss.

“You’ve known me for longer than you’ve known the ocean,” points out Gilbert, apropos to nothing. At the pride on his handsome face, she gives him a questioning glance. “We may both be one of your favorite things but you met mefirst.” 

He’s so _smug_ about it, so purposefully arrogant, so similar to the young boy she met all those years ago. By now she’s defeated all of her dragons in Avonlea and when she had stood back to admire the carnage, Gilbert and the sea had been there for her, encircling her in the safety of their island. 

Anne cannot think of another person with whom she has feels so young, so liquid, so unfettered by the existence of the world. She unceremoniously drops her fishing rod to the sand and takes the two steps needed to wrap her arms around Gilbert, pressing her lips to his chin before kissing him in earnest. He doesn’t seem to mind very much, if the way he throws down his own fishing rod is anything to go by. With his hands on the small of her back, Gilbert pulls Anne closer, his head dipped into her so that she has to place a hand on his ridiculous, too-big hat to make sure it doesn’t fall off. She can feel him laugh against her mouth at that, or maybe it’s because he can feel the way the back of her skirt is tucked into her belt. 

Eventually they find themselves lying back on the sand, Anne’s chignon long since having fallen out, Gilbert’s hat pulled low over his face. Their fishing gear is strewn sloppily across the sand but neither of them make any move to clean it up. Instead, they lie there and look up at the sky, Anne well aware that the appearance of her freckles after this will likely intensify tenfold. The summer sun tends to lighten her hair and increase the volume of sprinkles across her face, but she doesn’t much mind when armed with the knowledge that Gilbert likes to map her freckles with the tips of his fingers. 

It’s so odd to feel beautiful, yet when she looks away from the clouds to glance at her husband, she finds him enraptured with her silhouette and utterly unrepentant at being caught staring. 

“Did you forget what you wanted to say?” she asks teasingly. He scrunches up his nose at the familiar phrasing, showing her that he’s caught it. She’d once confessed to him that it was one of the more humiliating moments of their school years. Regardless of the hindsight of his feelings for her, she hadn’t been able to look him directly in the eyes when recounting the story. 

“I was just wondering,” he says carefully, “what you wanted to do now?”

Anne frowns. 

“I’m more than happy to stay here on this beach with you.” 

The glimmer in Gilbert’s eye returns. 

“No, I meant for the rest of our lives.” He nudges her softly with his bare foot, beaming at that. “We’ve got a lot of time, you and I.”

It occurs to Anne that everything up to this point has been working towards them being married, towards Gilbert being a doctor, to having a home together, to them becoming something that is their own. Now that they have it all, life is a large, blank expanse of utter delight. They could go anywhere now, could make any choice as husband and wife and no one would be there to tell them that they needed a chaperone or that it was improper or that they had to say goodnight. 

For the first time in both of their lives, they have complete freedom. 

Anne turns over onto her stomach facing the ocean, elbows sinking into the sand as she digs her fingers through it, letting the small granules run through her fingers while she tries to maintain her excitement. 

“I want to stay up all night and not go to sleep until it’s light outside,” Anne says, words tripping over each other as ideas flow out of her, “I want to cook new things that are most certainly going to turn out disastrously. I want to paint one of the rooms in the house a brand new color, a _vibrant_ one, just because. I want to _never_ have to eat squash again. I want to have chickens and a garden and children and a secret signal that only the two of us know.”

“What would the signal mean?” asks Gilbert, but Anne simply shrugs. 

“I don’t think I care,” she says. “It doesn’t much matter as long as we’re the only ones who know it.” 

“I like all of that,” he agrees after a few moments, his voice a little hoarse. Anne’s toes curl where they rest against the sand. 

“And what do you want to do, Gilbert Blythe?” 

“Hmmm.” He sits up, legs spread wide, eyes sweeping across the water as he thinks. “I want to go swimming with you.” 

“That’s your long term goal?” she asks skeptically, but Gilbert hops to his feet and sticks his hand out to her. 

“Nope,” he replies, raising his eyebrows daringly. “Short term.” 

Never one to back down from a challenge, Anne takes his hand and springs up. She still isn’t a very good swimmer, but the lake isn’t very deep, and she wouldn’t mind cooling off a little bit. Her excitement is so strong that she barely spares the woods behind them a glance before she unbuckles her belt and removes her skirt, leaving her in her blue shirt and the new chemise that Marilla had just finished sewing a few days ago. Determinedly, Anne ties the shirt off at her waist so that it won’t billow out too much in the water and get in her way. 

When she turns around to look at Gilbert, his suspenders and shirt are both off. He gives her a small shrug and says, “It’s practical,” before taking her hand again and leading her to the water. They wade in slowly, adjusting to the squishy sand underneath their toes, and Anne feels so utterly at one with the world that she can’t fathom ever having to go inside again. She wants to remain in the water forever with Gilbert, soaking the sun into their skin, letting the water lap gently at their legs, feeling the earth in harmony with their existence. 

Gilbert steps forward but Anne feels a rush of heartache at disturbing anything about the peace she feels right here, in this exact spot. She roots herself in the sand, nodding at him to go along, not caring about him moving forward without her just as long as he’ll let her catch up. Gilbert, always so reluctant to leave her side, seems to sense that she doesn’t mind it so much this time. He steps deeper into the lake until the water comes up to his hips, at which point he too stills, lost in his own perspective of their new home. 

Anne watches as he slowly turns his head from one side of the lake to the other and wonders what he sees there. She sees picnics in the sand, children running along the shore as they chase a dog who splashes them with water. Gilbert seems to be staring at the landscape with just the same reverence as she has been giving it all day, she notes. There’s a rush of love within her chest as she wonders whether he could be seeing the exact images she sees in her mind’s eye, or whether he is simply soaking in the beauty of the day. Either way, he feels more hers than ever, somehow. Anne catches it and holds onto it, this piece of her that is now lodged into who he is. 

She looks at him ahead of her, the muscles in his back moving as he stretches his arms out to lightly skate the tips of his fingers across the top of the water, carefully, as though he doesn’t want to disturb it too much. She looks at the jut of his shoulder blades, the light slip of his spine, and is painfully aware of how human he is. He’s skin and bones, breakable, hers to protect. Hers, period. He’s human and he’s that same person she met when she was thirteen years old but now he has been through so much more, hurt so much, loved so much, and come out of it all her beautiful husband, her favorite soul on this earth. 

She can’t stop herself from coming up behind him, sliding quietly through the water, and wrapping her arms around him. The urge to connect takes precedent over the urge to be still in the world as she presses her forehead just below the space between his shoulder blades. 

“How did you happen,” she whispers, and feels the rumble of his laughter in the tip of her nose and on the bow of her upper lip. 

“Same question,” replies Gilbert, turning around to face her. He squints at her for a breath, thinking, then sweeps her up in his arms, forcing her to wrap her legs around his waist. She feels lighter than the water as he kisses her; Anne decides there and then that this lake is theirs and no one else’s. It belongs to them, everything from the sky to the trees to the ripples in the water as Gilbert spins her slowly around in a circle. 

“I made about a million mistakes and somehow stumbled into you.”

“Ha,” he says wryly, kissing the tip of her nose. “More like knocked me over.”

“It’s not my fault you tripped so easily,” she teases. “Have better footing next time, what can I say?”

“Oh Anne,” he says, his eyes softening as they dip from her eyes to her lips and back again, a slow smile spreading across his mouth. “There’s no such thing as next time.”

As if to remind her, Anne’s wedding ring glints against the sunlight where it rests on Gilbert’s cheek. Her eyes catch it, and she lightly adjusts her fingers against his skin. Gilbert must feel it, feel the cool metal against his face, because his expression darkens slightly. She watches as it fills with the type of ardor that would feel overwhelming if she didn’t have the capacity to match his emotions stride for stride. 

“I think I thought you’d stop giving me that look after we got married,” she says to him, her throat constricting at the way his eyes beat into hers. 

“What look?”

“As though… as though you’re willing to burn the world down to convince me that you love me.”

From her position in his arms, she can physically feel the way he exhales. It’s abrupt and lengthy. Anne moves with his chest, ducking her nose into the warm divet of his collarbone, heart pounding out the beat of _closerclosercloser_ against his torso. 

“Anne, I… I sometimes think about the train ride back from Charlottetown on the night of our exams. The night I went to tell you that I loved you and failed spectacularly.” 

It’s an abrupt change of subject. Anne looks up at him, at the determination in his eyes, and senses that it’s got more of a connection to what they’re talking about than she thinks. Carefully, she turns her head so that it is resting on Gilbert’s shoulder, cheek pressed into his skin.

“Given the fact that we’re here, an argument can be made that you succeeded,” she says to make him laugh, but the chuckle he gives her is perfunctory, his mind already back with his eighteen-year-old self. 

“I had that entire train ride to think about… about what it would be like if you said yes. _When_ you said yes. I think by the time I got to Bright River station, I had convinced myself it would happen. I remember staring out the window and thinking of what it would be like if my confession brought you joy because I hadto in order to keep my nerve. I thought about how you might kiss me. How I would walk you home and we’d spend the entire time talking about what we wanted out of our future together, how I would come to Green Gables the next day and reveal my intentions towards you to Matthew and Marilla. I swear I… I had almost convinced myself that I’d get to see you every day for the rest of our lives if I could just get up the courage to confess to you.” 

“And then I was drunk and confused and you were…” She trails off, uncertain of how to express it. 

“Crushed,” replies Gilbert frankly, pressing a kiss to the top of her head to soften the blow of his words. “But I think about that night sometimes, not because of how much it hurt, but because of how _right_ I was. About all of it. Not the fantasy of what could have happened that night, but the other things that I fixated on to get me through that train ride. What it would be like to spend time with you, to truly be a part of your family, to have the opportunity to make you smile, to walk around with the protective shield of the knowledge that someday we would be married.” 

The part of her heart that had sunk at the idea of a rejected Gilbert now rises in her chest. She thinks about her perception of him earlier, how easily his skin could break, and then thinks about everything he has been through in his life. His determination, his tenacity, his _grit_ are all stronger than his bones. No matter how much this world has tossed him around, he has never lost the most essential pieces of him, the ones that allow him to love her so steadfastly and so well. 

“And now you make me smile more than anyone else in the world does,” Anne murmurs, leaning her forehead against his. “Oh Gilbert Blythe, I’d marry you all over again if I could.” 

She beams at him and he readjusts his grip slightly, shifting her up his torso that she’s hovering above him. Gilbert’s eyes close, letting the heaviness of his previous words be replaced by an affectionate glow. He brushes his nose against hers gently, and he’s smilingso much, his generous affection radiating from his body to hers. 

“Give me a few weeks, I’m still recovering from the last wedding we had.” He kisses her sweetly, a kiss with no intent behind it. “But that’s just the point, isn’t it? I look at you like this because being allowed to is an opportunity that, at one point, seemed impossible. I’m so lucky to get to look at you like this, Anne-girl. Whether it’s back in Avonlea or in our house of dreams or in this lake, I know how fortunate I am to be able to show you how much I love you.” 

“And do I show you too?” she asks hopefully. Perhaps she’s imagining it, but Anne thinks his hands tighten around her in that moment, squeezing her closer to him.

“Yes.” 

The response is so firm, it makes warmth span across Anne’s chest, the same type of protective shield to which Gilbert had just referred. 

“Yes?” 

“Yes.” Gilbert pauses, nuzzling his nose against hers again. “You look at me like you’re someone who has everything they want in the world,” he tells her. “And the only reason I know what that looks like is because it’s exactly the way I feel too.” 

It’s not the first day of marriage that Anne had planned, but somehow she thinks that they had managed to get it perfectly right. 


End file.
